Last week, I visited Dyrham Park
for the first time. The late 17th and early 18th Century house has a breathtaking
setting (see above) and its grounds, with their ponds and formal gardens, add
to the perfection of it all. The interiors are equally splendid and I enjoyed
walking around, looking at the furnishings and decoration, but I was drawn to a
painting. This was Murillo's An Urchin
Mocking an Old Woman eating Migas that had been in the house for centuries,
although the canvas I was staring at was, I think, a copy [1] of the original (see
below).
There are two threads to
Murillo's work: religious paintings and those of street life, and the painting
at Dyrham Park combines both. Prolific and popular in his time, Murillo had an
excellent technique and was able to convey movement and feeling. I remember
being struck by his work when I first saw The
Heavenly and Earthly Trinities [2] on a visit to the National Gallery in
London as a teenager.
I have indicated the main lines
of composition in the Dyrham Park painting above, the background being of
little significance. From this analysis, we see that our eye is led around the
images, with the lines drawing us to the face of the woman and, over and over
again, to the face of the boy. The dog also plays a part, as does the food that
the woman is attempting to eat with a spoon. The boy has a beautiful face (we
can barely see his body, but for the right shoulder and arm) and, while
engaging us, he is mocking the old woman, who looks across and up with fear and
resignation. Her bowl of migas is drawn to one side and partially hidden from
him (and the dog) by her right arm. The message is one of the cockiness of
youth and the despair of bullying in old age and being able to do nothing about
it. While the religious component is hidden, the painting could be taken as a
model for at least one of the Beatitudes [3] and may well have been conceived
by Murillo with this in mind.
Another question arises from the
title of the work: what is migas? By chance, I had lunch yesterday at Moro in Exmouth Market in London. On the
menu (see below, with magnified section) they had migas as an accompaniment to
grilled lamb and sweetcorn, so I had some. The migas that I was served was a
ball of fried, seasoned breadcrumbs and this is the way the dish is served in
modern Spain, and in many other countries, often with some small pieces of meat
or chorizo included. It is thus "leftovers" and this further
emphasises the lowly position of the old woman in the painting, although her
migas looks much more substantial and was possibly of bread scraps moistened
with liquid (water, milk, or oil?) from the jug seen in the bottom left of the
composition.
If you get the chance, visit
Dyrham Park [4]. It is a magnificent place and you, too, can stare at the
Murillo painting and be challenged by Murillo's urchin.
